Saturday, July 28, 2012

Knight of Aurora-Athena

(Masonic Degree - "Knight of Aurora")

"Aurora, goddess of dawn, is the Roman name for the Greek dawn goddess, Eos. ... She is shown flying before the chariot of the sun, sometimes carrying a torch and flowers. Aurora is comparable to the Greek Athene...".

(Coin obverse: Athena; Different coin reverse: owl; U.S. Dollar: owl)

"Athena ... Athene... Also known as: ...Glauk-Opis ('Owl-Faced'), Gogopa (Death Goddess), ...Merchanitis, Minerva (Roman), Nice, Nike (Goddess of Victory), Pallas (Storm Goddess), Pallas Athene, Parthenia, Parthenos ("Virgin"), ...Victoria (Roman). ...Hesiod connected her with Eris (strife) and at first she was a goddess of battle and storms. The Greeks identified her with the Egyptian sky goddess Neith. The grey-eyed Greek virgin goddess of war, wisdom, and handicrafts, and patroness of Athens... The Parthenon was her temple. The owl is her bird. ... It is said that she remained a virgin... Athena is comparable to the goddess of dawn, Eos, and the Roman Aurora. ..." Source: Patricia Turner & Charles Russell Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Dieties, pp. 83, & 79-80.

(Nike-Athena-Aurora)

"One of the principal motivations for athletes to display their excellence is the priceless prize of kleos aphthiton ('undying glory'). ... In modern times, with its inexhaustible media coverage and its rapacity for celebrity, athletes can attain worldwide glory within seconds of their achievements..." http://goddessnike.com/goddess_nike_and_the_olympic_games.php

(Colorado fire - "The Dry Way began with roasting and heating in an intense fire...the Dry Way worked with the 'raging fires of our lower nature'," Dennis William Hauck, Alchemy (Idiot's Guide), p. 106.)

"There are two traditional ways of preparing the Philosophers (sic.) Stone, the wet way and the dry way. The dry way takes only eight days using double philosophic mercury.

"Nicholas ... Flamel says the practice begins as follows: ...Take
thous in the first place the eldest or first-born child of Saturn... The
operation will be rightly done when thous seest upon the matter an
astral sign like a star [the Star Regulus]. ... Then is made the key and the sabre... The ancient Egyptians reputedly used the dry method and called it the Saturn Regime. ...The mineral of lead is certainly appropriate for the Saturn Regime or Dry Method. ...Shakespeare concealed Portia, the Virgin of the Merchant of Venice, in lead." Stuart Nettleton, Alchemy Key, pp. 201,202,210.

"The rapid spiritual ascent of the Dry Way was very dangerous for unprepared initiates and could result in a loss of personal identity or even madness." (Dennis William Hauck, Alchemy (Idiot's Guide), p. 106.)

"[Archetypes] easily catch hold of you and you are possessed as if they were lions or bears, say – primitive forces which are quite definitely stronger than you. ...in all cases identification with the unconscious ...brings a weakening of consciousness, and herein lies the danger. You do not 'make' an identification, you do not 'identify yourself,' but you experience your identity with the archetype in an unconscious way and so are possessed by it. Insanity is possession by an unconscious content that, as such, is not assimilated to consciousness, nor can it be assimilated since the very existence of such conditions is denied." ~ Carl Jung (qtd. in http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/are-we-possessed/)

"Phanes (Ancient Greek: Φάνης, from φαίνω, phainō, "I bring to light"), or Protogonos (Greek: Πρωτογόνος, "First-born"), was the mystic primeval deity of procreation and the generation of new life, who was introduced into Greek mythology by the Orphic tradition..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanes_%28mythology%29

"In the Orphic theogony (which differs substantially from the more well-known cosmogony of Homer and Hesiod), Dionysus appears successively in three forms: Phanês-Dionysus, the bisexual god of Light, burst from the silver egg of the cosmos (the so-called Orphic Egg is sometimes depicted as an egg girt with a serpent) at the beginning of time. ... Zeus [swallowed] ... Phanes ... assimilating his power. Zeus then took the form of a serpent and begot the second Dionysus, Dionysus-Zagreus, the Horned Child, upon his daughter Persephonê. ... Athena, goddess of Wisdom, had witnessed the murder of Dionysus-Zagreus and had even managed to save his heart from the rage of the Titans. She brought it, still beating, to her father Zeus. Zeus consumed the heart, as he had previously consumed the Serpent-entwined Egg of Light of his great-grandfather Phanês. He then came to Semelê...and begot upon her the third Dionysus, known as Dionysus-Lyseus or Bakkhos [Bacchus], or simply as Dionysus. [Another version of the legend has Athena preserving the heart of Zagreus within a small figure she fashioned from the gypsum of the Titans, into which she breathed life.] ... Having been born twice, once as Zagreus and once as Lyseus, Dionysus is known as Dithyrambos, the 'twice-born.'" http://hermetic.com/sabazius/dionysus.htm

"PHANES was the Protogenos (primeval god) of procreation in the Orphic cosmogony. He was the primal generator of life, the driving force behind reproduction in the early cosmos. Phanes was hatched from the world egg (the primordial mixture of elements) when it was split into its constituent parts by the ancient gods Khronos (Time) and Ananke (Inevitability). ... Phanes was portrayed as a beautiful golden-winged hermaphroditic deity wrapped in a serpent's coils. The poets describe him as an incorporeal being invisible even through the eyes of the gods. His name means "bring to light" or "make appear" from the Greek verbs phanaô and phainô. ... Khronos (Time) generated an egg...The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it (male and female)... and thirdly an incorporeal god with golden wings on his shoulders, bulls’ heads growing upon his flanks, and on his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the appearance of all kinds of animal forms ... Protogonos (First-Born) [Phanes], ... Zeus the order of all and of the whole world, wherefore he is also called Pan (All)." http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Phanes.html

(Regulus, Polaris, and Sirius)

"…Saturn, therefore, is the power behind Venus, as Sirius us the
power behind the Sun. These two great Stars (Set and Horus) are
therefore symbolically identical, and in this way also is Venus
transcended in Sirius…" Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival, p. 52.